CHAPTER CCXXIV.

CHARLEMAGNE, CASIMIR THE POET, MARGARET DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE, NOCTURNAL REMEMBRANCER.—THE DOCTOR NOT AMBITIOUS OF FAME.—THE AUTHOR IS INDUCED BY MR. FOSBROOKE AND NORRIS OF BEMERTON TO EJACULATE A HEATHEN PRAYER IN BEHALF OF HIS BRETHREN.

_Tutte le cose son rose et viole Ch' io dico ò ch' io dirò de la virtute._

FR. SANSOVINO.

It is recorded of Charlemagne by his secretary Eginhart, that he had always pen, ink and parchment beside his pillow, for the purpose of noting down any thoughts which might occur to him during the night: and lest upon waking he should find himself in darkness, a part of the wall, within reach from the bed was prepared, like the leaf of a tablet, with wax, on which he might indent his memoranda with a style.

The Jesuit poet Casimir had a black tablet always by his bedside, and a piece of chalk, with which to secure a thought, or a poetical expression that might occur to him, _si quid insomnis noctu non infeliciter cogitabat ne id sibi periret._ In like manner it is related of Margaret Duchess of Newcastle that some of her young ladies always slept within call, ready to rise at any hour in the night, and take down her thoughts, lest she should forget them before morning.

Some threescore years ago a little instrument was sold by the name of the Nocturnal Remembrancer; it consisted merely of some leaves of what is called asses-skin, in a leathern case wherein there was one aperture from side to side, by aid of which a straight line could be pencilled in the dark: the leaf might be drawn up, and fixed at measured distances, till it was written on from top to bottom.

_Our_ Doctor, (—now that thou art so well acquainted with him and likest him so cordially, Reader, it would be ungenerous in me to call him mine)—_our_ Doctor needed no such contrivances. He used to say that he laid aside all his cares when he put off his wig, and that never any were to be found under his night cap. Happy man, from whom this might be believed! but so even had been the smooth and noiseless tenour of his life that he could say it truly. Anxiety and bereavements had brought to him no sleepless nights, no dreams more distressful than even the realities that produce and blend with them. Neither had worldly cares or ambitious hopes and projects ever disquieted him, and made him misuse in midnight musings the hours which belong to sleep. He had laid up in his mind an inexhaustible store of facts and fancies, and delighted in nothing more than in adding to these intellectual treasures; but as he gathered knowledge only for its own sake, and for the pleasure of the pursuit, not with any emulous feelings, or aspiring intent

—to be for ever known, And make the years to come his own,

he never said with the studious Elder Brother in Fletcher's comedy,

the children Which I will leave to all posterity, Begot and brought up by my painful studies Shall be my living issue.

And therefore—_voilà un homme qui était fort savant et fort eloquent, et neanmoins_—(altering a little the words of Bayle),—_il n'est pas connu dans la république des lettres, et il y a eu une infinité de gens beaucoup moins habile que lui, qui sont cent fois plus connus; c'est qu'ils ont publié des livres, et que la presse n'a point roulé sur ses productions. Il importe extrêmement aux hommes doctes, qui ne veulent pas tomber dans l'oubli après leur mort, de s'ériger en auteurs; sans cela leur nom ne passe guère la première génération; res erat unius ætatis. Le commun des lecteurs ne prend point garde au nom des savans qu'ils ne connaissent que par le témoignage d'autrui; on oublie bientôt un homme, lorsque l'eloge qu'en font les autres finit par—le public n'a rien ou de lui._

Bayle makes an exception of men who like Peiresc distinguish themselves _d'un façon singulière_.

“I am not sure,” says Sir Egerton Brydges, “that the life of an author is an happy life; but yet if the seeds of authorship be in him, he will not be happy except in the indulgence of this occupation. Without the culture and free air which these seeds require, they will wither and turn to poison.” It is no desirable thing, according to this representation, to be born with such a predisposition to the most dangerous of all callings. But still more pitiable is the condition of such a person if Mr. Fosbrooke has described it truly: “the mind of a man of genius,” says he, (who beyond all question is a man of genius himself) “is always in a state of pregnancy, or parturition; and its power of bearing offspring is bounded only by supervening disease, or by death.” Those who are a degree lower in genius are in a yet worse predicament; such a sort of man, as Norris of Bemerton describes, who “although he conceives often, yet by some chance or other, he always miscarries, and the issue proves abortive.”

JUNO LUCINA _fer opem!_

This invocation the Doctor never made metaphorically for himself, whatever serious and secret prayers he may have preferred for others, when exercising one branch of his tripartite profession.

Bernardin de Saint Pierre says in one of his letters, when his _Etudes de la Nature_ were in the press, _Je suis a present dans les douleurs de l'enfantement, car il n'y a point de mère qui souffre autant en mettant un enfant au monde, et qui craigne plus qu'on ne l'ecorche ou qu'on ne les crève un œil, qu'un auteur qui revoit les épreuves de son ouvrage._